Simple ways to brand your Amazon and eBay Store’s Design
Branding goes far beyond getting a solid logo and store format.
Although it’s essential to touch on these points and implement the proper design elements, it has almost become expected to cover these areas in order to find success on Amazon and eBay at all.
The competition is becoming far more fierce than it ever was before on these marketplaces, so developing a store with a beautiful logo is not going to win over many customers, except for maybe some random ones who stumble on a random good deal.
It’s all about taking the extra step to show your customers that your brand is unique (whether on a marketplace or your own online store). Then, you need to remind them that it was your brand that allowed them such a pleasant experience.
Let’s Start With eBay Branding
Let’s face it, most users go to eBay and Amazon with no intention of remaining loyal to one or two merchants. However, these aren’t the people you’re trying to target. There are plenty of users who are going to consistently come back to these marketplaces in search of gear or work and gifts for other people. Even bookstores and antique stores have seen that it’s much easier to brand a site when your product is something that people build loyalty for.
Basically, you’re not interested in the casual browser. Therefore, it’s essential to build a bond with the folks that are looking to become loyal followers. You generally only get one chance, so let’s explore some of the ways to make an impact.
Get Going With Physical Marketing Materials
Yes, eBay and Amazon do quite a bit to block out your branding options online, while pushing buyers to mainly stick around on the main marketplaces, regardless of which merchant users buy from. That’s why with eBay it’s particularly important to boost your branding in the form of physical marketing materials.
Many merchants still ship directly from their own homes or warehouses, while others have the opportunity to specify the types of materials they want in each package. If you still maintain control of your shipping and packaging materials, it’s time to start going old school.
Start with printing out business cards and thank you letters. If you’re just getting started with your store these should be either handwritten or signed by you. Feel free to spice it up every once in awhile with little promotions and coupons inside the boxes.
Take a hint from Zappos, and surprise people with faster shipping, and make sure that all of your boxes have some sort of logo to show that it’s your business. Some eBay merchants have been known to throw in something for free if they know that a person is a loyal customer.
Strategize with Promotions
This is the big area that’s going to coax users to keep coming back to only your eBay store.
Tons of promotions are available for setting up on your eBay page, and they are bound to give your customers an idea of how you treat your best customers.
To start, we have the codeless coupons, which let you send out a unique URL that can be sent out to people through email, social media or any other form you want.
Order discounts are handy, while the shipping discounts often create urgency when people see that they should buy soon, or that they should consider putting a few more items in their basket to get free shipping.
Finally, sales events work to display all of your sales items on one simple landing page. For example, you may have a sale on all running shoes. In this case, you don’t have to do any other branding work, because it’s all compiled for you.
Don’t Forget About Featured Items
It’s common for merchants to forget about the featured items. Why is this the case? Because you must have at least 30 items in your store to activate the feature.
Featured items are a solid branding tactic for smoothing out the user interface on your store. I’m honestly not sure why eBay doesn’t allow features items for smaller stores, since customers enjoy seeing the most relevant products right up front.
What About Amazon Branding?
Configure Purchase Emails
Although the branding is limited, you still have the opportunity to send out automated or manual emails when someone comes to your Amazon page and purchases an item.
The best part is that you can insert links for tracking, social media, your ecommerce website and anything else you find relevant. In addition, we’ve noticed that many merchants even provide logo towards the bottom of their emails to remind people where they just bought the item.
Reply to All Customer Service Messages
Managing customer service messages is somewhat tedious, especially considering you may have emails coming in from a handful of outlets and marketplaces.
However, it’s essential to reply to every message that comes in, so we recommend boosting the look of your brand with a tool like Xsellco Fusion, which brings all of your customer service messages into one place. This means that you don’t need an additional ticketing system, and you can configure automated replies as well.
In Conclusion
As we stated before, compared to creating your own shop with an ecommerce website builder, it’s not the easiest task to brand your eBay or Amazon pages in a visual manner, but there are plenty of opportunities to let your customers know that you have the best customer service, best pricing and quality promotions that should keep them coming back for more. Make sure you construct your pages so that they’re clean and professional. That’s the first step. After that you have the ability to share a significant amount of products with beautiful imagery and descriptive product details.
Finally, we recommend getting creative with the pre and post sale marketing materials, since that’s your best bet when it comes to showing off what you can do for your customers.
Author bio: Catalin is the founder of ecommerce-platforms.com and his current obsessions are matcha tea and mindfulness meditation.